Noam Chomsky’s most choice critique of the US presidential
process in 2016 is the lack of effective priorities. Two stand out for him –
global warming and nuclear arms. What is it about us as a species that eclipses
what is important from what titillates or provides false cover for our
realities? Perhaps it is the way content is pushed over electronic media.
Ashis Nandy may be considered as a well referred curator of
India’s social dynamics. He responds to a
question in a recent interview thus : “All
developing societies, including China, have now accepted that they are
backward. Our future is exactly the same as the future of all standardised
nation-states. It is a new vision for them as well, except that their vision is
300 years old. We have now joined the bandwagon. India, therefore, doesn’t have
a distinctive future.”
Such is the conditioning that can occur over decades of
patterned information processing. However, evenso, cracks in patterns provide
us clues to what we may have been or might choose to become. I spotted at least
two recently.
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| The Ratnagiri Abode of King Thibaw |
One was from Singapore’s ChannelNews Asia, that featured King Thibaw’s
exile in 1885. Few would even link the histories between India and Myanmar
in this manner, leave alone that between Buddhism and it’s spread from India. That
the documentary could access through dogged enquiry living progeny of the
characters from history is testimony to human investment in curiosity. As
someone living in India, it astonished me to know that such a forlorn
promontory lay unsung and neglected atop a Ratnagiri mound, as if the occurrence
were unremarkable. British manipulation during their colonial period may
perhaps have even more evidence than this documentary contained.
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| Myanmar's last Royal Family that was exiled to India |
It is the
contemporary somnambulance of 'free' India, that strikes me even more. Free from the British, but enslaved to economic paradigms indeed. To be
sure, I revisited the Singapore based Channel to check if that quality and character for
codification of cultural heritage were mere happenstance. Lo and behold, I find
a spirited journalist exploring Sikhism’s influence through Amritsar’s history,
in a variation of documentary style. Such consistency in curation on a news
channel is surely a credit worthy feature. I have yet to see contemporary
depictions of India made in India. So perhaps, my eyes and senses mediated
through them are prejudiced through Singaporean newsbytes. After all, the
template of governance in Singapore is exactly the substance and forerunner of
Ashis Nandy’s ‘standardized nation-state’.
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| The Tasmanian Tiger with Canine like head |
TV5 Monde is a French channel I peruse to ensure my knowledge of
the French language does not rust. From its culinary shows, quiz formats, brilliant
movies to its quaintly depictions of French territories like Guadeloupe, it
represents a cultivated aesthetic, specific to its culture. However, it’s
contemporariness was what caught me in it’s embrace of the global warming
theme. What would a Frenchman do in the land of erstwhile British prisoners? That’s
right, French investigators setting up equipment to scale the height of the
slow growing high quality logwoods have a lot to do with the clash between
climate, ecology and human economic activity. French polyvalence and
multi-dimensionality comes through in this feature. It depicts generations of
Tasmanian inhabitants, as well as lumberjack technology evolution.
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| The endangered Tasmanian Swift Parrot |
While on the
one hand, the camera accompanies scientists from Hobart's university studying surviving birds species
like the swift parrot, it reminds us that the Tasmanian devil lost its place in
mainland Australia. Similarly, it reminds us of the extinction of marsupials
like the Thylacine. It’s
realistic depiction of ‘corporatization’ of forest wealth shines through, in
the otherwise templated beauty of Australia’s untamed nature.
While the
documentary accommodates space for the social evil of lobbying in parliamentary
systems, (with no less than the Australian Prime Minister saying that
conservation had gone too far) it amplifies the maxim, that the map is not the
territory. It’s sober reminder comes from depicting art in a fitting
tribute on sculptor Greg Duncan’s 100
meter wall. UNESCO got into the picture lately, and declared acres under a sanctuary, where no human should enter. Through lives of lumbermen, the documentary however, makes it clear that even well
intended global compacts like the UNESCO may get the picture wrong, and that it
is the intersection between humans and forest systems that needs intervention.
